People around the world are suffering more now than at any time in my lifetime, and probably much longer. But the peoples of the world, including we who live in and love the United States, have become increasingly permissive and secular.

Any ideology fixated on preserving marriage and the nuclear family should be proactively encouraging as many couples to marry as possible, including gay couples. It's time to call out the hypocrisy of the right: It doesn't make sense to be pro-marriage and pro-family while opposing gay marriage and gay families.

The highly politicized pro-choice/anti-choice dispute is usually fought on the battleground of religion, though not religions agree on it. It involves complex moral and personal questions that are framed by some religions as theological.

The minister at a beautiful outdoor wedding I attended last month wore a shawl with symbols of numerous faiths. The person sitting next to me whispered in my ear, "That woman has found a growing industry."

Mr. Bengt's Wife, in its American premiere treated me to an insightful view of the master in his early development. A no-holds-barred tale of hysteria, gender expectations and personal redemption, it is the mirror opposite of the mature and organized Ibsen's A Doll's House.

Evolution is as scientifically accepted as gravity. And while we don't quite understand how gravity works, we know a lot about how evolution works -- much more than Charles Darwin, even with all his genius, could have dreamt.

Unthinking religious leaders have made it out to be an either/or prospect: Either accept that Scripture is as much a science book as it is a spiritual book or the entirety of the Bible's reliability as a spiritual guide is in question.

If it seems foolhardy to forecast the date of the apocalypse, predicting the future of religion is not so far-fetched, as some scholars say they have an increasing number of scientific tools to make such projections.

Put aside the crazy "Obama's a Muslim" idiocy -- assume John McCain had won the presidency instead. Do you really think the Senate would confirm a Muslim candidate right now, even a conservative right-wing one? I don't.